Week 76

"Hey everyone!!! it's been an awesome week!

I stumbled across one of my favorite verses in the Bible this week:

1 Peter 3
15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:

16 Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.

Those who speak evil of Christ and Christ's gospel, will be ashamed. When the judgement bar comes and they are standing before Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father, they won't have that foundation of faith that they could have had. They won't have confidence before God. I was reading a talk called "Remember Lot's Wife" by Elder Holland, and I changed my perspective on faith a tiny bit. It is a talk about faith, and as I was reading it, I was thinking about the perspective that we have versus the perspective that God has. We are in the moment, and we can see only a small part of what might possibly be in store for us. We set out to tract a street, and yes, we are expecting miracles, but we have no idea what's actually going to happen. We don't even know if maybe we aren't supposed to be there for as long as we thought, or longer than we thought, all we know is that we felt like we should go there and so there we are. All of the different forces that are in play may be in our favor or they may not be, but we showed up and we are ready to work. Rain or snow. (probably rain) Shine or gloom. (probably gloom) It doesn't matter to us because we are representatives of Jesus Christ and we have a light inside of us that can dispel gloom in an instant. Then what happens? We look back. Elder Holland said: "It is possible that Lot’s wife looked back with resentment toward the Lord for what He was asking her to leave behind. We certainly know that Laman and Lemuel were resentful when Lehi and his family were commanded to leave Jerusalem. So it isn’t just that she looked back; she looked back longingly. In short, her attachment to the past outweighed her confidence in the future. That, apparently, was at least part of her sin.

So, as a new year starts and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives. So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently she thought—fatally, as it turned out—that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as those moments she was leaving behind."

We are actually usually pretty comfortable with what God has given us in any given moment. Not always, but usually. We have learned to live with it, or we have just accepted it, or we are really enjoying ourselves. Either way, it's going to be really hard to change, and yet...what does Heavenly Father ask us to do every single day? Repent. Change. Progress. Become perfected in Christ? Yep. Let yourself repent; let yourself grow; let yourself improve and change. It sounds simple, but it's really really hard. Hard is good. It means that we really have to want it in order to get it. It's not going to get handed to us on a silver platter. We don't just simply state that they believe and then the countless blessings flow in. Faith is important. However, we all have unbelief. I like to think about the story from Mark:

23 Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

24 And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

Help thou mine unbelief. Even in our own profession of faith, we need His divine help.

One more quote from Elder Holland: "Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past, but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us, and that Christ truly is the 'high priest of good things to come.'"